Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.

Saturday, September 28, 2013

DARREN SHAN REVIEWS DOCTOR SLEEP by Stephen King

From We Love This Book

In
the world of books, I am married to Stephen King. I read Salem’s Lot more
than 30 years ago, and he is the author I have turned to most in the decades
since. I’ve indulged in many affairs along the way – there have been times
when, if I was asked for the name of my favourite author, I would answer with
Jonathan Carroll or Clive Barker – but King is the one I keep returning to. I
wasn’t sure what to make of the news that King was writing a sequel to The
Shining. It was one of my favourite books of his, and I wasn’t convinced
that a sequel would compare favourably with it. Would he give us another
haunted hotel? Would Danny Torrance spiral off into the realms of madness as
his father had before him? The answer, thankfully, is no. This isn’t a sequel
in the usual sense, where we get more of what we were given first time round.
King is not attempting to start his own Saw-like franchise. Instead we get a
very different beast of a book, where the links to The Shining are
important but not all-defining.